SOUTH CAROLINA. 



We assert that fifteen of the States have deliberately 

 refused for years past to fulfil their constitutional ob- 

 ligations, and we refer to their own statutes for the 

 proof. The Constitution of the United States, in its 

 fourth article, provides as follows : 



No person held to labor or service in one State, 

 under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in 

 consequence of any law or regulation therein, be dis- 

 charged from such service or labor, but shall be de- 

 livered up on claim of the party to whom such service 

 or labor may be due. 



This stipulation was so material to the compact that 

 without it that compact would not have been made. 

 The greater number of the contracting parties held 

 slaves, and the State of Virginia had previously de- 

 clared her estimate of its value by making it the con- 

 dition of her cession of the territory which now com- 

 poses the States north of the Ohio 'River. The same 

 article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition 

 by the several States of fugitives from justice from the 

 other States. 



The General Government, as the common agent, 

 passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of 

 the States. For many years these laws were executed. 

 But an increasing hostility on the part of the Northern 

 States to the institution of slavery has led to a dis- 

 regard of their obligations, and the laws of the General 

 Government have ceased to effect the objects of the 

 Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, 

 Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, 

 New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana,* Ohio, 

 Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa have enacted laws 

 which either nullify the acts of Congress, or render 

 useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these 

 States the fugitive is discharged from the service or 

 labor claimed, and in none of them has the State gov- 

 ernment complied with the stipulation made in the 

 Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early 

 day, passed & law for the rendition of fugitive slaves 

 in conformity with her constitutional undertaking, 

 but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more 

 recently to enact laws which render inoperative the 

 remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of 

 Congress. In the State of New York even the right of 

 transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; 

 and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to sur- 

 render to justice fugitives charged with murder and 

 with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Vir- 

 ginia. Thus the constitutional compact has been de- 

 liberately broken and disregarded by the non-slave- 

 holdiag States, and the consequence follows that South 

 Carolina is released from its obligation. 



The ends for which the Constitution was framed are 

 declared by itself to be " to form a more perfect union, 

 establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide 

 for the common defence, promote the common welfare, 

 and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and 

 our posterity." These ends it endeavored to accomplish 

 by a Federal Government, in which each State was 

 recognized as an equal, and had separate control over 

 its own institutions. The right of property in slaves 

 was recognized by giving to free persons distinct po- 

 litical rights ; by giving them the right to represent, 

 and burdening them with direct taxes for three-fifths 

 of their slaves ; by authorizing the importation of 

 slaves for twenty years, and by stipulating for the 

 rendition of fugitives from labor. We affirm that these 

 ends for which this Government was instituted have 

 been defeated, and the Government itself has been 

 made destructive of them by the action of the uon- 

 slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the 

 right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic 

 institutions ; and have denied the fights of property 

 established in fifteen of the States and recognized by 

 the Constitution ; they have denounced as sinful the 

 institution of slavery; they have permitted the open 

 establishment among them of societies whose avowed 

 object is to disturb the peace and to eloin the property 



* Neither Indiana nor Illinois have passed a personal lib- 

 erty law. 



of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged 

 and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their 

 homes ; and those who remain have been incited 

 by emissaries, books, and pictures to servile insur- 

 rection. 



For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily 

 increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the 

 power of a common Government. Observing i\\e forms 

 of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within 

 that article establishing the Executive Department the 

 means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geo- 

 graphical line has been drawn across the Union, and 

 all the States north of that line have united in the 

 election of a man to the high office of President of the 

 United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile 

 to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administra- 

 tion of the common Government, because he has de- 

 clared that that " Government cannot endure per- 

 manently half slave, half free," and that the public 

 mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the 

 course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combina- 

 tion for the subversion of the Constitution has been 

 aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship 

 persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are in- 

 capable of becoming citizens; and their votes have 

 been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the 

 South, and destructive of its peace and" safety. 



The declaration concludes as follows : 



We, therefore, the people of South Carolina, by our 

 delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the 

 Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our 

 intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union 

 heretofore existing between this State and the other 

 States of North America is dissolved, and that the 

 State of South Carolina has resumed her position 

 among the nations of the world as a free, sovereign, 

 and independent State, with full powers to levy war, 

 conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, 

 and to do all other acts and things which independent 

 States may of right do. And for the support of this 

 Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of 

 Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other 

 our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honors. 



Such is the sum of the grievances which 

 were published to the world as sufficient to jus- 

 tify the destruction of the Union. No State had 

 any additional ones to allege in its own special 

 case. The apprehensions declared to exist in 

 the minds of the Southern people looked for- 

 ward to such a radical change in their social 

 condition as would involve the extinction of 

 the white inhabitants of the State. On the 

 well founded nature and justness of these ap- 

 prehensions they professed to act. Admitting 

 that they were truthful and certain to be- 

 come realities, there is not a patriot in the 

 world, who, if placed in such a position, would 

 hesitate to rush to arms and contend to the last 

 moment of existence. No outside or incidental 

 circumstances would be needed to arouse to war 

 a people thus placed. Was such the position 

 of the Southern States? Was there that dan- 

 ger of impending ruin which their apprehen- 

 sions portrayed ? Facts and their own declara- 

 tions deny it. The act of Congress to amend 

 the Constitution denies any right of interference 

 in the domestic institutions of a State. One of 

 the citizens of South Carolina thus described 

 the manner in which secession was effected, 

 thereby showing that whatever apprehensions 

 for the future existed among the people, they 

 w r ere in a very torpid state : 



" I know of no instance in the history of the 



